DISCLAIMER: Scrubs is owned by the fantastic Bill Lawrence and the ABC network (as of Season 8). I own nothing, perhaps not even any semblance of a plot, because whenever I go into Sci-Fi, it always turns out a little Stargate-like. Lyrics are owned by the fantastic Coheed and Cambria, as this arc of the story is best suited to their fantastic words.

AUTHORS NOTE: Thanks for the feedback! Here's Chapter II in return for your kindness—wherein JD ponders life, friendship and mental instability while being accosted, throttled, tackled and berated by a variety of fruity characters. Also starring sweet!Carla, hyperactive!Turk, poor!Elliot, defensive!Janitor and vintage!Cox, with mentions of insane men and future bikers. Oh and somewhere amidst it all, the plot thickens. Like broth. Or some sort of semi-solid, souring liquid.

Lyrics adapted from the song Fuel For the Feeding End by Coheed and Cambria.


CHAPTER II: THE BROTHER

From start to finish, I've made you feel this
Uncomfort in turn with the world you've learned—
To love through this hate, to live with its weight,
A burden discerned in the blood you taste...

An hour after Daniel Knott was pronounced dead, JD found himself on the bottom floor of the hospital, rounding the corridor towards the front desk. Carla was running her shift there, and he had a bunch of prescriptions to hand in before checking on his patients. As he gave her the charts and they exchanged pleasantries, he caught Elliot talking to a dark-haired man in one corner of the waiting room, her hand placed reassuringly on his shoulder.

JD's curiosity got the better of him.

"Hey Carla," he asked the Latina nurse after a moment, "Who's Elliot talking to?"

Carla lifted her eyes from the terminal to glance at the couple speaking softly in the corner. She raised her eyebrows and shrugged, "Beats me, Bambi." She handed him back the charts with a slight smile. "There you go, all done."

JD couldn't resist smiling in return at his best-friend's wife. "Thank you, Carla."

Just as he was about to leave, said best-friend rounded the corner in his trademark green scrubs, looking gleeful. He kissed Carla on the lips with a casual: "Hey baby!" before turning to JD.

Turk grinned at his best friend. "Hey, Vanilla Bear. Guess who just rocked Mr. Garson's gastric bypass?" JD's smile grew into a full-blown beam. When the medical assigned to Mr. Garson had decided to push for surgery with the man's consent, Turk had been over the moon about it, especially since he was the one written down to perform the procedure. However, once he read over his charts and discovered how frail the patient really was, Turk began to grow nervous. He'd talked to JD plenty about how the surgery, as part of his attempt to try and come out more with his feelings. To hear it had all gone well made JD truly happy for his friend. They rushed into an embrace and for a moment there, JD forgot all about the events of that morning.

JD felt oddly out of place as Turk began to talk to Carla about the procedure as an attempt to try and come out more with his feelings towards her as well. He was happy their marriage was going well, but he felt like he was intruding on their private moment if he stayed any longer. Besides, he thought, I should probably go check on my pneumonia patient.

He turned to walk away, disregarding the call of: "Hey! You're not supposed to go through there!" until someone tapped his shoulder. Turning back around to address the figure, he found himself standing face-to-face with the man that Elliot had been talking to before. In fact, he could have sworn it was her voice that had called out a moment ago. Yeah, he thought, grimacing, it was, too...

The man was in street clothes. Obviously not a patient, then, he considered. He seemed pleasant enough, looking JD straight in the eye with a friendly smile and an atmosphere about him that radiated sociability.

"Are you Doctor Dorian?"

JD smiled back. "Yes. Yes, I am."

"I'm Patrick," the man introduced, sticking out his hand. JD shook it without hesitation. "Daniel Knott was my brother. Did you know him?"

For a moment, JD froze, wondering if this man—Patrick—would pull the same number his brother had on him by yanking him forward and uttering cryptic messages. However, Patrick released JD's hand a moment later, letting his own fall to his side. The dark-haired doctor crumpled in relief. However, there was still the matter of answering the man's question.

He frowned. "I'm sorry. I only met your brother today." He paused, before adding. "I was switched off his service, but if you want to talk to his doctor, I can get her for you? In fact, you were talking to her a little while ago..."

JD trailed off as Patrick shook his head absently, his face adorning a worried frown. It contorted itself into a look of deep concentration a moment later, as if there was something that was disturbing him that he was trying to figure out. JD received his answer to the man's strange train of thought a moment later, when he spoke hurriedly.

"That doesn't make sense," Patrick began, "Daniel talked about you all the time. You are Doctor John Dorian, right?"

JD nodded, not sure where this was going, but feeling more than a little freaked out, a feeling that only intensified when Patrick's next words were spoken.

"He had a nickname for you, too." The man said, face still adorning that disturbed, far-off look. "He called you JD."

The young doctor froze at the sound of his nickname passing through the man's lips. He was hit with an onslaught of emotions—overpowering him, overwhelming him. How the hell did he know something like that?

To Patrick, JD simply replied. "I'm sorry. You have the wrong person." He turned to leave, having nothing more to say to him.

"Don't you dare walk away from me!"

For the second time, JD found himself rooted to the spot by the exclamation. "Excuse me?"

Before he could do what he was about to do next, of which he really had no idea—would he walk away? Turn and confront him?—JD felt two large hands on his shoulders, which spun him around before promptly throwing him against the wall of the corridor leading to the center of the first floor. Shock passed through his system as he stared, wide-eyed, at the panting man in front of him.

Patrick's eyes were wide, full of rage. He growled. "You are Doctor John Dorian. You knew my brother. YOU KNEW HIM!"

In the background, JD could hear a variety of things happening—people were standing, awestruck as they watched the scene play out before them, while Carla had picked up the phone and was dialing security and someone was behind Patrick, trying to pry him from JD to no avail. These things were overshadowed, however, by the absolutely carnal look in Patrick Knott's eyes. It's not just Daniel who was creepy, then, the part of JD's head not freaking out about this stated. His entire family is nuts...

The rest of JD's mind couldn't help but agree.

Patrick, hearing nothing of what was occurring around them, continued to scream at JD. "He talked about you all the time! Like an old friend! My brother was no liar, which means you are. WHY ARE YOU LYING?"

The brown-haired man's hands, which had previously been resting on JD's shoulders in a grip that would give a vice a run for its money, had since then secured an equally as tight grip around his neck. JD spluttered, fingers clawing at the hands around his neck as the man strangling him continued to accuse him of lying, of insulting his brother's memory by implying he was wrong.

And then, as soon as it had started, it was all over. The hands from around JD's neck loosened, then disappeared altogether as Patrick Knott was thrown off him by—

"Janitor?!" JD wheezed, watching as the jumpsuit-clad maintenance man threw Patrick towards two burly security guards that appeared at the main entrance right then. Instead of taking his position in throttling him like JD thought he would, the Janitor simply nodded curtly in his direction before walking off, mop in hand while muttering something that sounded like: "Nobody chokes Scooter but me."

JD didn't have time to ponder the Janitor's odd behavior as he was surrounded by his friends to watch Patrick Knott being escorted, kicking and screaming, out of the hospital. Carla immediately began mothering him, only to be replaced by Turk, who jabbered on about how insane that was, only to be replaced by Elliot, who hugged him tightly while letting out a string of high-pitched expletives as she apologized over and over again for not being able to stop Patrick in the first place.

She, of course, was replaced by Doctor Cox, who fell into the roll of doctor quite quickly as he observed the strangulation marks on JD's neck. His mentor then slipped back into the emotionally-crippled narcissist that Sacred Heart knew and loved (or, well, not so much) by asserting: "Well, Glenda, you managed to survive this one. Now, as much as you like it rough from your little boy-toys, strangulation is so no-hot the way to go. I don't know if that guy was just too sick of the constant stream of girlish crap you sent his way, or just generally disliked you, but give it a minute longer, and we would have had a dead Newbie."

As Doctor Cox ranted about the ethical dilemma between being a doctor who generally doesn't like seeing people die, but was willing to make an exception due to how a 'dead Newbie' equaled a 'quiet Newbie', JD contemplated the oddity that was the Knott family. What are the odds, he thought, glumly, that I'd be harassed by not one of them, but two? He was afraid that the incident hadn't clarified anything for him. Instead, it just left him a hell of a lot more disturbed than before...

And with a hell of a lot more questions, too.


JD spent the remainder of his shift on alert, waiting for more random members of the Knott family to come flying in and attack him. In his minds eye, he saw the quick fantasy of many dark-haired Daniel and Patrick Knott's falling from the sky in parachutes, clad in ninja gear, which soon turned into a lets-beat-up-JD fest. He shuddered, returning from the vision with the exclamation: "I will never perform your flying-monkey, crouching-tiger Kata's!"

Turk promptly patted him on the back. "Knott-family ninja's again?"

JD nodded glumly as Turk just glanced at him sympathetically before running back to the surgical wing to get ready for his next appendectomy. He had told his friends all about the incident between him and the late Daniel Knott a while ago—excluding all mentions of the "You've been targeted" part, of course. He knew adding that would only worry them, and they probably wouldn't understand it anymore than he did, so he left it out.

He tried to cast it out of his own mind, also, but nothing seemed to work. He began to hear it all too often, and it was disturbing him. He tried not to let it show while he was with patients, but it bugged him to no end. Logically, the only reason it was still hanging around in his mind and ringing in his ears was because he was trying so hard to figure it out—the motives behind saying those words, and the way that Daniel Knott knew his name, and Patrick Knott found out his nickname.

It continued to bug him, even as he clocked out for the night after his sixteen-hour shift, and he dreaded the ride home. Since his hands did most the work, his daily rides to and from the hospital always gave him time to think, and while it worked to his advantage, due to his rampant imagination, tonight it looked horrible. He couldn't even fantasies properly—every time he tried, it always ended in the Knott-family ninja's taking over the scene.

It was unnerving, to say the least.

JD decided, in the end, to just suck it up and go home, where he could watch Gilmore Girls reruns and forget all about the events of the day. He threw his bag over his back and walked across the parking lot, where his scooter was waiting on the other side of the tarmac. He had just withdrawn his keys and spotted Sasha within his field of vision, when—

CRACK.

JD crashed to the pavement, pain blooming across the back of his head. The world was a blur of colors before him as his vision tried to right itself from the damage of the blow. He groaned, unable to process what had just occurred for a full five seconds before the denial was replaced with confusion. What the hell...?!

The young doctor received his answer a moment later when a sharp kick aimed at his side hit him directly in the ribs. The next moment later, another kick, which hit in the exact same spot and threw JD into a bout of pain he had never known existed. He gasped in agony, hands flying immediately to his side where he ran them across his ribs, checking for any break in the bones. Pain exploded across his mid-section when he prodded his fourth and fifth rib. Definitely broken.

The next kick to his ribs was cushioned by his hands, which were crushed against his side. It wasn't enough to break his fingers, but the agony was mind-numbing. JD spluttered, the force of the next blow knocking him on his back. His head smacked into the ground again, and was cushioned by a thick, red liquid. Blood. He was bleeding. Somewhere within his mind, Doctor Diagnosis listed his injuries.

Head trauma, repeated bashings against his mid-section. Ribs broken in two places.

But JD stopped listing them when he met the eyes of his captor. "You," he gasped, turning to his side again and clenching his eyes shut in hope that the blurry figure of Patrick Knott would somehow just disappear. When he opened them a moment later, he hadn't, and JD cursed. His first thought was: Why are so many people after me today?

And his second thought was: Worst. Day. Ever.

He wasn't sure how he was so calm in the face of being beaten into a bloody pulp—for surely Patrick Knott wasn't going to stop slugging him in the gut just because JD asked him to—but it was probably due to the blood loss. He could feel the red liquid creating a pool around his head—one of which he kept falling into with every punch and kick—and he knew the delirium would be setting in soon if he didn't receive immediate medical attention.

The man above him paused to regain his bearings, and JD took the opportunity to ask the one question that was weighing heavily on his mind.

"W-Why?" He croaked, voice hoarse from the screams that had been ripped from him. He was more than a little surprised that someone hadn't noticed the brawl, but they were in the least populated area of the carp ark, which was good news for Knott and horribly bad news for JD. He attempted to clear his throat, but didn't have much luck. Knott was staring down at him, a look of morbid curiosity flitting over his features. "Why are you doing this?"

Knott fell to his knees beside the young doctor in reply. For a moment, JD held hope that the man would stop beating him and actually reveal a straightforward answer for once, but he had no such luck. Knott only knelt beside him to grab his jacket and pull him up to his feet. Powerless, JD rose, only to fall back to the floor again a split second later when Knott threw a punch directly into his face, the man's fist smashing into JD's jaw.

His attacker straddled him, but before he beat JD senseless for a second time, he hissed his response to the young doctor's question.

"You are the target," Patrick Knott said, speaking in a low, guttural tone that chilled JD to the bone. "You must be killed."

JD had frozen completely at the words that passed through the man's lips, suddenly sure that this wasn't just a strange occurrence, or a case of him forgetting having met Daniel Knott.

No.

This was more than strange.

This was bordering on a conspiracy.

Unfortunately, a conspiracy to what, JD had no idea. All he knew was that he had never met these two men in his life and he had most definitely never done anything that would target him in the eyes of, well, anyone. Unless saving people's lives was suddenly a crime, JD had honestly no idea what Patrick Knott was talking about. "You must be killed."

Why?

But JD never received his answer, much like his inability to extract any answers from Daniel Knott, who was lying cold underneath a sheet in the morgue by now. Three things happened, right then, all in rapid succession of one another...

First, Patrick Knott lifted himself up from his place against JD, so the larger man was now straddling the dark-haired doctor. His face twisted into the most evil of grins, and JD shuddered. He knew, in that moment, that this wasn't just some man who was distraught over the death of his brother—he was a psychopath. Body frozen in fear, JD could only watch as Knott brought his fist down for another, crushing blow.

Secondly, a revving of a motorcycle could be heard as it flew across the parking lot at extreme speed. The sound exploded through JD's ears as the vehicle smashed against the security barrier in place at the back of the hospital and drove across the tarmac to where the two men were having it out. The headlights threw Knott into a frenzy as he used his hands to shield his eyes from the radiant glow. JD screwed his own eyes shut at the glaring light, feeling his entire body crumple in relief.

The third and final thing that occurred, however, threw the entire situation farther than JD expected. A massive cracking sound ripped through the night air, crashing against JD's ears and rendering him breathless at its magnitude. Less than half a second later, his eyes snapped open only to see the body of Patrick Knott fall to his side, blood gushing out of a wound to the head.

JD stared in complete shock at the blood-ridden body before him.

What the...

He felt faint. The world spun around him, a volley of sights, sounds and movement. He felt nausea begin to stir deep within his stomach as he rested his head against the ground, feeling utterly helpless as he lie there, his body abused and broken. Seeing blood on a daily basis meant that it didn't throw JD into a tailspin to see the corpse of Patrick Knott staring wide-eyed at him only a few feet away, but he was still completely and utterly shocked that the event had occurred in the first place.

And who knew if the person who had shot Knott wouldn't shoot him too?

This last fear—which had thrown him straight into a downward spiral, making his body numb with terror—was put to rest by the familiar face that clouded his vision. JD blinked up, trying to decipher who it was, and he cracked a smile when the realization hit him. He's here. It's alright now...

"Doctor Cox," JD whispered, grinning up at the curly-haired doctor who was staring down at him, mouth turning down into a familiar grimace. As the young doctor scanned the older man's face, his grin faded somewhat. Doctor Cox looked . . . different. He couldn't explain how, exactly, except maybe that his hair looked a little longer and his eyes were shielded from view by a pair of black, wraparound anti-flash glasses. JD managed to ease his growing doubt by reminding himself that it was still, unmistakably Doctor Cox—he had the same small frown that appeared between his eyebrows when he was worried about something and the same large, strong arms that were now used to pick JD up off the ground.

His smile returned. "I've figured you out, Doctor Cox."

The older man said nothing, which only confused JD. He expected more of a reaction to the news, to this answer that had formulated itself right in front of his very eyes when he saw his mentor rushing to his aid. It was so exciting; after all, that he'd finally done it. He'd finally figured it out. And he won't be able to hide the fact that he cares, anymore. The subtle differences between the man in front of him and the Doctor Cox he saw roaming the halls of the hospital faded from his mind.

"You—You care about me," he continued, "You'd never say it, but you're always there to save me." As he was saying this, a small part of his brain wondered why Doctor Cox wasn't calling for help when he was so clearly in dire need of it. Still, he decided he didn't care. His mentor was here, which meant that no one was going to beat him anymore, or shoot him, or bombard him with cryptic words and statements.

Doctor Cox raised an eyebrow in response to JD's statement. "Is that right?" He asked in a distant tone of voice while he worked on stopping the blood loss from the wound on the back of JD's head.

The young doctor smiled, muttering a drowsy "yup" in response to his question. His smile grew wider as the thought crossed his mind that things really were going to be okay now.

That's when his world—the parking lot, Patrick Knott, the pain in the back of his head and Doctor Cox—faded to black and JD welcomed blissful unconsciousness with a warm smile.

Things were going to be alright.

Why would you deny me answers,
If I'm just a boy on the break of being?
Horror and hell through its fires—
Be brutally honest, was it better before me?


AUTHORS NOTE II: And that's the end for Chapter II. Stay tuned for Chapter III, which promises some goodness of the Coxian (meaning Cox family, not JDCox slash) variety. Speaking of Doctor Cox, I really hope I've managed to keep Perry in character, since he's probably the character I have the hardest time with. Writing what you all know will eventually be future!Perry will be a lot easier, because his character would have changed over time, but writing vintage!Cox is a lot harder, because when he's concerned, it has to be written according to the character. So if you review, can you please drop a note on how I did with Doctor Cox in particular?

-- Exangeline.